Thursday, September 20, 2012

An article titled, "U.S. Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs" is
interesting for several reasons: (1) just how true this is, (2) how much worse
it is here even than in many other countries, and (3) what is blamed for the
problem.

Here's an excerpt illustrating the first two points:

Perhaps the most ostentatious violation of [Metro de Madrid CEO
Manuel] Melis's manual of best practices is expensive architecture in
stations. "Design should be focused on the needs of the users," he
wrote, "rather than on architectural beauty or exotic materials, and
never on the name of the architect."

American politicians
have different priorities. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is
spending $3.8 billion on a single subway station at the World Trade Center
designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect known for his costly
projects. If New York could build subways at the prices that Paris and Tokyo
pay, $3.8 billion would be enough to build the entire Second Avenue subway,
from Harlem to the Financial District.

Unfortunately, it is regarding the last point that the article is weak.

A huge part of the problem is that agencies can't keep their
private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house
planning, officials contract out the project management and early design
concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and
quality up. And even when they know better, agencies are often forced by
legislation, courts and politicians to make decisions that they know
aren't in the public interest.

That's right: Our government-run transit system does interface with vestiges of
capitalism -- but please note how government-regulated they are -- and so capitalism gets
much of the blame! By focusing only on comparisons of American transit
construction costs to those in other countries -- where all the systems are
government-run -- the article misses an important lesson from history that we
would do well to consider:

Why have Americans so trusted politicians on infrastructure in the
past century? Even without today's advanced technology and financing, the
much-maligned "Robber Barons" of the 19th Century,
operating amid greater freedom (and no environmentalism) could have made
California's bullet train commercially viable, while completing it in
under 3 years, not the 21 years Jerry Brown plans.

The problem with mass transit costs in America is anything but too much freedom
for some tiny portion of a government-distorted "private" sector. By neglecting to look at historical data, one can easily fail to reach such a conclusion.